Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Copy and paste any text into Analyze My Writing to receive a very detailed look at the contents. Find out word, sentence, and character counts. Learn the number of quotes, commas, and more. Scroll down further to view graphs on word and sentence length. Learn the readability score of your text using several different indexes. Another chart displays the 50 most commonly used words and word pairs. Download the included word cloud (jpeg) to see the most common words by size and color.
This site includes advertising.

tag(s): creative writing (122), descriptive writing (38), expository writing (31), paragraph writing (15), persuasive writing (55), six traits of writing (4), word clouds (13), writers workshop (31)

Make your story-telling come to life in any content area with this free tool! Story Map uses a map or pictures to tell the story. The simple editor in this tool syncs to Google Drive editor to create a storymap. The created storymap is a sequence of slides for a map location or image that includes a heading, text, and even images and embedded video. The map or image and included information appear side by side. You can click between the slides connecting one location to another (or portions of an image to another). Your story is now interactive! To use: Follow the prompts to connect your Google Drive to the tool. Choose the type of story to create, Map or Gigapixel (image). Don't worry about the map image showing on the first page. When building a map, the front page will include the portion of the World Map based on map points throughout the project (ex. USA or Europe). Add a headline and detail to the appropriate areas. Include links and change font to bold and italic if desired. Add images to any page by uploading from your computer (through Google Drive) or by entering a link to an image. Enter the URL of the Vimeo or YouTube video you wish to use. Need help? Click on the Gigapixel tab along the top for help in uploading images and videos. The Media box not only has an area for the URL, but also an area to enter a caption and credit for the image. Add additional pages by clicking "Add Slide" in the left-hand menu. Add points to your map, one per slide, by typing the building, street, city, and country. Use the zoom bar in the top left to find the location. Customize the map style, background color, and font using the Options buttons. Click Share to send through social media or to use an embed code. The embed code can be used in any site, adjusting its width for different sites. If using Gigapixel, use a large image (as the image will literally be the "map" and your points move around the image). Save your image to Google Drive and copy the URL of the image as you will need it in the first step.

tag(s): maps (208), stories and storytelling (40), timelines (49)

Oh nO is a unique logic puzzle game that is available on your web browser or as an app (on any device). Use the blue dots with numbers to decide where to place red or blue dots on the grid. The numbers on the blue dots indicate how many other blue dots surround each. Click once to make the circle blue and twice to make the circle red. Select different size grids and use the timer to increase difficulty. Follow the introduction on the site to learn more details about this mind challenge!

tag(s): DAT device agnostic tool (143), logic (163), problem solving (226), puzzles (143)

The U.S. Map Distorted by Population offers a visual look at the size of states based solely on population. Follow the link in the short article to find the actual populations of each state. This simple image provides a good introduction to population vs geographic size of states.
This site includes advertising.

tag(s): population (47), states (122)

PBS Kids offers a large selection of interactive whiteboard activities exploring different curriculum topics. All activities are related to their popular TV characters. Scroll through to find resources sorted by math, language arts, social science, and the arts. Each activity includes a short description and suggested grade level. Find activities for sight words, vocabulary, estimation, measurement, civics, gravity, and much more. Click on any link to go directly to the activity or download.

tag(s): design (83), environment (240), estimation (35), game based learning (171), gravity (42), literacy (107), measurement (126), operations (72), painting (56), patterns (63), reading comprehension (141), sight words (23), suffixes (9), vocabulary (235), vocabulary development (90)

International Museum of Women merged with Global Fund for Women making this site a powerful voice for women. Learn about women's issues from around the world and find out how Global Fund's grantmaking and fundraising are helping. Global Fund's recent campaigns include Artist Change Maker, Me, Too, International Day of the Girl, Girls Lead in Tech, Adolescent Girl Advisory Counsil, and more. Past projects have included IGNITE: Women Fueling Science and Technology, a global campaign and media project that explores the roles of science and technology in advancing gender equality. Read stories of activism, gender equality, and heroism. The videos are hosted on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, they may not be viewable.

tag(s): sustainability (44), women (137)

Find an impressive amount of information about water conservation on this site. Though created for conservation in Arizona, the information is applicable to a variety of areas. This is a hot topic in many locations suffering through droughts. Be sure to look at the latest news and information in the energy saving toolkit. The toolkit includes interactive activities to teach water conservation. Find 100+ ways to conserve in the tab along the top and numerous resources under the Kids and Resources tabs.

tag(s): conservation (82), natural resources (37), water (101)

Ask Smithsonian answers fascinating questions via videos that are less than two minutes long. There is a new video each week. Find out if your interesting science question has an answer here. Sometimes you may think your question is not scientific, such as "Will Chicken Soup Cure a Cold?" or "How Do People Get Phobias?" Well, the answer to those questions is at Ask Smithsonian. Give it a try and see if your question has an answer.
This site includes advertising.

tag(s): animals (280), bacteria (21), human body (93), insects (69), plants (144), space (213), time (92), video (256)

National Geographic offers a rich and extensive site for educators through its Education homepage. Scroll down the page to find resources, reference materials, maps, media, collections, and much more. Scroll to the bottom of the page to find Explorer Classroom. For specific content searches use the search bar to find and filter results by grades, subjects, resource type, and audience.This site is frequently updated. Check back often!

tag(s): animals (280), climate change (87), commoncore (75), earth day (60), ecology (100), energy (130), food chains (17), map skills (56), maps (208), migration (44), multimedia (43), oceans (146), STEM (260), weather (163)